An eccentric alien-invasion yarn of unusual scope and ambition.
A Cuban orphan is mentored by a benevolent space-and-time-travelling robot to oppose an invasion of Earth by ravenous, monstrous entities in Harrigan’s SF novel.
Portals (or “doorways”) are appearing on Earth. On the other side of some of them await fiendishly hungry, shape-shifting horrors that possess cunning and intelligence, making them an extinction-level threat (“They always look like things we fear, predatory archetypes like reptiles, spiders, and others, but twisted, misshapen. They are also big, very strong, and hard to kill”). Tom Lafitte (taking his surname from the legendary pirate-hero of New Orleans, Jean Lafitte) is a Cuban native, introduced as a terrified orphan fleeing a 1909 campaign against nonwhites in the island’s hinterlands. He finds a surprising guardian and mentor in “Pan,” a cloaked figure ultimately revealed to be a personable humanoid robot. Pan, with infinite patience, tutors the peasant lad in science fundamentals and the network of enigmatic doorways, several of which he is tasked to close with early versions of EMP bombs. An increasingly careworn and battle-scarred Tom returns to the central story thread at intervals; other chapters follow the travails of additional survivors, automatons who outlast the human race, and even the monsters themselves. The nontraditional narrative skips over a great deal of scientific exposition (and millennia of evolution) and get straight to business, some of which is very violent and gruesome (in the “splatterpunk” mode). There are also flirtations with Lovecraftian demon-worship, Voudon/Santeria spirituality, and the meaning of sentience (or, for that matter, existence), alongside cameo appearances by two children’s-book favorites, The Velveteen Rabbit and The Wind in the Willows. If those sound like curious ingredients for a bloodthirsty SF/horror story gumbo…they are, but they constitute a novel diversion for genre readers looking for something a bit outside the usual “weird tales” fare that still delivers the requisite claws, fangs, and tentacles.
An eccentric alien-invasion yarn of unusual scope and ambition.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798991919937
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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